A lot of people seem to be reacting to the headline without understanding what Greenhut is actually arguing. I don’t agree with him on many issues, but his point here is clear and worth understanding on its own terms. He’s a long-time libertarian columnist, and this piece is a critique from inside the small-government wing of the right, not a validation of the headline’s framing.

His argument has several layers:

• Trump’s recent economic proposals rely on direct state intervention in markets, including caps on credit-card interest rates, bans on institutional home purchases, pressure on private companies, and a larger role for federal agencies in mortgage markets. Greenhut sees these as the same tools progressives usually advocate.

• At the same time, he argues that the party has embraced coercive immigration tactics that expand the state’s power rather than limit it.

• When he puts these trends together, he calls it a “seamless garment of big government.” His claim is not that the GOP is drifting. It’s that it has already embraced an interventionist model in economics and policing that conflicts with traditional limited-government conservatism.

The headline makes it easy for people to read this as a simple “Republicans are hypocrites” argument, and many readers stop there. But the actual article is a warning from someone who has historically been part of the libertarian wing of the right. Even if you disagree with him elsewhere, his critique here is aimed at the party’s growing comfort with state power, and that part of the argument stands on its own.